Written by Andreas Babiolakis

Warning: minor spoilers for Past Lives are throughout this review. Reader discretion is advised.

인연

The idea that love between two people can be predetermined by the Korean notion of in-yeon (someone you have always connected with in past lives) seems comforting at first. This person is your soul mate. You were meant to be together. This is beyond circumstance and you can remain certain that this wandering soul was always meant to arrive at your destination. However, many motion pictures love to rely on fate as a blessing and there’s nothing wrong with that. Who doesn’t want to be swept away by the kind of magic you can only find on the silver screen? If your life is particularly loveless, mediums like cinema are ones that can help you find that spark again because of how much they bend the rules in favour of serendipity.

What we don’t see enough of in film is how fate can be a curse, and that’s precisely what director and writer Celine Song examines in her feature-length debut Past Lives: a tenderly desolated romantic drama that begs the question “What happens if you meet the right person at the wrong time?” What I like most about Song’s film is how it fully commits to this hypothesis without ever taking shortcuts or backing out due to the fear of the unknown. Past Lives doesn’t strive for cinematic convenience or the pure directness of real life. It settles for a poetic observation of what life can feel like as Song wrings out the ringing pain subdued under public fronts and the fear of pushing others away. Not much of Past Lives begs you to care during its brisk hundred-hour runtime, but you do so anyway because you know what is unfurling before your eyes and you’ve lived this life before, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Past Lives is never sugar-coated or synthetic, but it does know how to take you to that exact feeling of agony via the simplest means. If a film can be emotionally economical, then Past Lives is precisely what such a case would look like.

*Past Lives* gets to the root of how one’s soul and heart can be crushed in as few moves as possible.

The promotional materials for Past Lives misled me to believe that this was going to be a capricious romantic film about an unfortunate woman that will have to choose between the two men in her life, but the film is so much smarter than this tale we’ve seen done many times before. Nora (birth name Na Young) emigrates from South Korea, leaving behind her life of old. This includes her close classmate Hae Sung, who was a part of her daily life when walking home together. Na Young moves to Canada and is renamed Nora; she lives there for most of her life from this point on. Meanwhile, Hae Sung stays in Korea and inhabits his nation’s culture through and through (down to partake in the mandatory Conscription military service). Back in Canada, Nora becomes immersed in North American culture and takes up writing many years after moving; she meets Arthur while taking a class in New York City.

During this flash forward to the future, Nora reconnects with Hae Sung online. There’s nothing explicitly romantic here: they’re just pleased to reunite once again. This translates into Hae Sung coming to New York City to visit Nora, even though she is happily married to Arthur. Again, Past Lives is less interested in creating a fuss surrounding a complicated series of relationships. Instead, it recognizes that some unions that are meant to be just cannot happen, and it is this angle that makes Song’s feature devastatingly unique. While the entire film is astoundingly gorgeous (a particular image I cannot shake out of my mind is the series of fragmented, human-esque statues at the start of the film: beings that keep going despite their voids), it’s as important to note where Past Lives heads as it is to remark on the whole picture. If anything, Past Lives doesn’t really have a drive or a pulse. It kind of just exists, as if whatever happens was already cemented in this foreordained reality. As we are suspended in this picturesque oblivion, we can see Nora’s predicament take place without any outside forces at the ready to change the course of her life.

*Past Lives* exists in its own state of limbo, as if nothing can change the outcome that was fixed from the very start.

Maybe Nora and Hae Sung were always meant to be together, and their occasional run-ins could signify that in-yeon that was secretly always taking place. However, in this particular life, too much has taken place for these two halves of a whole to work. No Hollywood ending can fix this schism. The fact that Song never resorts to some fully blown argument from anyone in the film is a remarkable amount of restraint from a director that clearly knew what mood she wanted to evoke. She also can confide in her three leads who let her screenplay do the bulk of the heavy lifting. Greta Lee shines as Nora, taking inspiration not from show-stopping performances from motion pictures but rather that free spirit you come across every day on the commute to work. This is a person you feel in your core exists, not one you’re being spoon-fed into believing exists. Even though this is Nora’s story through and through, Teo Yoo and John Magaro are reliably effective as Hae Sung and Arthur respectively, as they allow Nora’s inner conflicts to drive their responses. Also kudos for neither character ever feeling the need to shame Nora for sensations she cannot control. Past Lives took the path of least predictability with this choice.

Everything comes together perfectly as Nora’s world feels like an ethereal wonderland around her, from Shabier Kirchner’s softly toned cinematography (he’s quickly rising in the ranks as one of the finest directors of photography in the game) to Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen’s lachrymose score (the Grizzly Bear veterans are no strangers to making audiences weep: see Blue Valentine). Past Lives is somehow planted right in that grey area between one’s set of interpretations about life: it is either beautiful or it is painful. From start to finish, Past Lives lingers like a nagging memory shoving its way to the forefront of your thoughts, begging you to reconsider your choices. Where does one’s identity come into the picture when we are considering and reconsidering which paths we take? This is one of the dilemmas Nora faces as she feels tethered between her motherland and her new home, but really this isn’t about Nora leaping between two lives. This is her sole life; any other lives come before and after she is born and deceased. She is the only Nora in this reality. She knows this. Whatever happens happens and there’s nothing she can do to change the course of this providence.

Past Lives concludes with a gut-wrenching realization that this is it. Shall we ever cross paths again? Maybe. If so, it won’t be any different from what has just happened. This refreshingly courageous approach to onscreen romance is the kind that will find Past Lives facing its predetermined fate: on many end-of-year lists that dictate the best films of 2023. Even if we ignore the immediate response I got from this feature, I cannot help but speculate whether or not Past Lives will stick with people enough to become a generational staple on the topic of romantic dramas. Joining the company of films like Drive My Car and Aftersun is Past Lives: a contemporary elegy of past lives that have us transfixed in hypnotic limbos of reflection. All three films are ones you feel more than you analyze or watch from afar, and they each have a knack for resurrecting specific feelings from your subconscious as you engage in empathetic whirlwinds. Celine Song and Past Lives are in great company if this is the case, and I cannot wait to see where this tremendous director goes after a debut as consummate as this film.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.